Foil Arms and Hog
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2025–2026
2:32 · 1.1M views · Dec 26, 2013
A comedy song by the Irish duo Foil Arms and Hog about the experience of flying Ryanair, with its many upsells and indignities.
Used as a joke in threads about Ryanair's fees, dark patterns and boarding rules, where the airline's experience is so awful it is comical.
3 comments from Hacker News
Ryanair basically invented most of the dark patterns that are now prevalent in all travel websites. Back then, the experience was so awful that it was comical (and even inspired a song[0]). Therefore I'm not surprised that they are the first to mandate you install their app on your phone. All other companies that have dreamed of this will be quick to follow suit. Notice the euphemism of calling this "going digital". Everybody is already digital, using a pdf reader on their phone at the terminal, despite some companies discouraging this practice. That's not digital enough, is it? [0]: this video
The Foil Arms & Hog 12 year old skit [1] is still relevant. - [1] this video (Website part at 1:42 calling out the insurance example).
It's during the "etc" that I start to get pissed off personally. YMMV (The number of upsells is such that it made a song: this video )